


roots and wings

by youheldyourbreath



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, Sweet Home Alabama AU, idiot babies have to work for their happy ending, reference to miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21686590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youheldyourbreath/pseuds/youheldyourbreath
Summary: “Where’ve you been, MJ?” Peter said, laboring off of their old couch.Michelle bristled at the old endearment that she had buried with the rest of her past, “It’s just Michelle now, thanks.”“I don’t care what these new folks you’ve been parading around with say. Your friends call you MJ.”(or: the sweet home alabama au)
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 47
Kudos: 213





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays! this is my annual romantic comedy au. new chapters will be posted on Fridays. yes, I know today is not Friday BUT I will not be around tomorrow. so, enjoy this chapter. 
> 
> ps. I know its short. the other chapters will be longer. but this one, for story reasons, has to end where it ends.

Michelle Jones did not like airplane travel. As a rule, it made her anxious. There were too many variables, too many things out of her direct control, whenever she flew to make the experience at all comfortable. It was as if she was meant to trust someone that was not herself. 

It was not that she did not acknowledge people had skills and talents she did not possess that suited them better to certain tasks than her, but, the long and short of it, was people were famously unreliable. 

Entirely routine turbulence shook the cabin. Michelle cursed and she held fast to the armrests. Her knuckles whitened. 

"Excuse me," she pleaded to no one in particular. 

The flight attendant that had done an admirable job the entire flight ignoring her discomfort was immediately at her side, smiling in the plastic way Michelle imagined all flight attendants did to every overly needy first class passenger. "Yes, Miss? How can I help you?"

She barely managed to still the uneven tremor out of her voice. "I need a drink." 

There was an awkward beat before the attendant patiently pointed out, "You've had two already, Miss. We have a two drink minimum."

Her hands squeezed the plastic seat rest and her engagement ring angrily bit into her skin. "No," Michelle shook her head. "No, see. I'm not trying to abuse the rule. Really. I just, uh, really, _really_ need that drink."

The flight attendant's smile tightened. "Ma'am, we're set to land in forty-five minutes. I would recommend you try and relax until then." 

Michelle let out a shrill, nervous laugh. It oozed the casual impatience of New Yorkers. She loathed the sets of curious cabin eyes that glanced in her direction. "No, see. I, uh. You'd really be doing me a solid." 

There was a distant bell from the main cabin. The flight attendant turned her attention to the call. "I have to go attend to other passengers, Miss. Excuse me." 

"No. Wait. Ah. _God damn it_." 

To reiterate, as a rule, Michelle Jones did not enjoy airplane travel, but the part she hated the most was the landing. How a metal tin can that hurtled through the sky at impossible speeds was meant to land on an itty bitty stretch of land was ridiculous. It was a product of mankind's hubris at its best and reckless at its worst. 

The cabin shook from some turbulence. 

Michelle squeaked and clenched her eyes shut tightly. 

And somewhere deep within— like some true north, a conscience— a voice reassured her, " _Nearly all flyin' accidents happen in the first three minutes of taking off. Once you're going, you're flyin', Em._ " 

There was another lurch of the plane. She cursed her conscience. It was some barely corporeal Peter Pan figure that took to the skies with an ease mere mortals did not possess. It did not get to have an opinion on airplane travel. 

When her conscience returned, attempting to soothe her, the voice sounded like it was smiling, youthful and free, " _Breathe in and out. There you go, darlin'. Just like riding a bike. You know how. You're good._ " 

But the swooping in her stomach did not feel like she was good-- her eye caught the glint of her engagement ring-- no, the sinking felt like foreboding. 

* * *

The trees reached up to the heavens, as imposing as the skyscrapers that had been her wilderness these last five years. She touched the bark and it scratched her palms the way she remembered. 

Michelle traversed the familiar paths of childhood and was surprised to see that she still knew the way to the little house at the end of the dirt road. With the whole world at her feet, the forgotten house in rural Alabama was more a misty memory than a real home. Sometimes she wondered if she dreamed her time here, but it was still there— the imperfect house with blue shutters and red door.

Wisps of memory danced just on the blurry edge of her vision. She did not look, but, if she had, she would have seen it all. It was a disjointed fairytale. Wendy Darling was trailing after the boy from the woods. Neverland was his home. He flew as freely as he treaded the dirt paths. The trees were his comrades. And for a minute, brief and shinning, Wendy had found a home there, too. 

She banished the wisps. 

Michelle climbed up the creaking steps and fished out the key she inexplicably still had. She half-believed it would not work after all this time, but, with a turn, it clicked. The door swung open and she felt her heart race out of her chest, running, running, _running_ away. 

She stopped. 

The furniture, the furniture she had picked, was all still there, as if she had never left. 

And there was another thing she had left, still sitting just as she had left him, on their couch. 

Time stretched thin. Years melted away. She could almost taste the last bitter words that she snapped. Michelle could narrowly hear the argument and the rotten rhetoric of her heartbreak echo off the shabby walls.

She stared longer. There was something different about him. She silently chastised herself. Of course he looked different.

Nothing fucked you harder than time. 

Peter Parker paled, “What the fuck?!”

Michelle rolled her shoulders back and tossed the paperwork at his feet. “Honey, I want a divorce.” 


	2. Chapter 2

She could see the overwhelming confusion flicker in his familiar eyes. The twins of fury and surprise strangled his features. And Michelle found comfort in how, for once in her life, she managed to have the upper-hand against her ex-husband. She spotted the Manila envelope at his feet. Her soon-to-be ex-husband. 

“Where’ve you been, MJ?” Peter said, laboring off of their old couch. 

Michelle bristled at the old endearment that she had buried with the rest of her past and corrected him, “It’s just Michelle now, thanks.”

“I don’t care what these new folks you’ve been parading around with say. Your friends call you MJ,” Peter said, as softly as a lover. His eyes were as mad as that same lover spurned. 

Michelle felt her face heat and her hackles rise. She flashed her shiny engagement ring, “Actually, my fiancé calls me Michelle.” She wasn’t sure what made her act so cruelly. She wondered if it was the way her ex-husband— again, she reminded herself that Peter was technically her husband until he signed the damnable divorce papers— managed to cut to the heart of all of her insecurities about her new life, or maybe it was her impulse to argue with him in the way that they always had, but Michelle had no excuses for her bile. 

Only explanations. 

She reasoned it was this place, this town, that regressed her five years in time. Michelle had run so fast and so far away that night and swore to herself, if she got out, she would never look back. 

She had been so small, so unimportant in this town. She had been Peter’s little wife, Mrs. Parker. It had swallowed her up whole until one day she woke up and realized she was less than a person. 

And so, she ran.

New York City opened it’s dirty, bustling arms to her and seemed to whisper, “You’re perfect, just as you are.” It was a seductive proposition after so long being suffocated in the dark, resigned to wife and not woman. 

Peter looked like he was at a loss of what to do with his hands. He crossed them over his chest and then shoved them in his jean pockets and then pat them down at his sides. Her ex-husband always had a nervous energy to him. It had only amplified with time. 

“So. You’re getting married, huh?” 

“I’m trying. But someone won’t sign the divorce papers.”

He stepped over the envelope and crossed to _their_ , _no_ , she hastily corrected herself, _his_ kitchen. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

She trailed after him with a pronounced frown. “I’ve sent you these papers a dozen times over the last three years. You’ve ignored every attempt to get this sorted.”

He ducked his head into the beaten-down refrigerator and pulled out a fresh beer. Muscle-memory stole the bottle from his hand and she easily uncapped it on the island. Michelle returned it to his stupefied hand. 

“Thanks,” he muttered.

Her frown depended, “Sign the divorce papers.” He rolled his eyes and padded out of the kitchen. She cursed, “Peter Parker, I am talking to you.”

“I hear you, darlin’,” he called, as he kicked open the screen door and settled on the porch with his beer. “Figure all of town can hear you, too.”

He tilted his head back and the sun flirted across his face. Michelle remembered how he liked the sun on his skin and the quiet of the woods. She resigned to give him neither sun nor silence. She stepped in front of him, blocking the rays, and demanded, “Sign the divorce papers.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not going to sign those papers, MJ.”

“Why not?”

He suddenly stood. He was not taller than her, but she had forgotten what made him so _Peter_. Michelle was stunned by how much room he took up. Peter Parker somehow managed to command the air of every space he inhabited. Like that flying boy from Neverland they used to pretend he was as kids. He was somehow mystic and magic and man all in one body.

And to him, the matter of their divorce and his subsequent issue with it was easily summed up in one sentence: “Because we’re married.”

“Oh please, we haven’t seen each other in five years.”

“I got up in front of our friends and family and promised ‘til death do us part.” He looked down at his body. Then, his steady gaze returned to her. “And I don’t look dead, do I?”

Her mouth ironed into a flat line. “Sign the papers, Peter.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re infuriating!”

He jogged down the creaky, old front steps. “You should go see Aunt May, if you plan on sticking around. I bet she’d like to see you.”

* * *

She did not want to see May Parker. Not for a minute. The last time she had seen the older woman, that was practically her mother, had been the night she left Peter. They had been at the old Parker house on Ingram Street and Michelle felt sick to her stomach as the older woman attempted to console her. 

Uncle Ben had lightly squeezed his wife's shoulder and beckoned her away. It had taken everything in MJ to not burst into tears at his kindness. She did not want to speak to anyone that night. Not even the Parkers. The kindest, sweetest people imaginable. 

As she mindlessly wandered her old haunts from childhood, she wondered how much Ben and May Parker hated her now. She had run out on their nephew. After everything they had done for her, after her own mother had died and her father split on his fractured family, she had abandoned them, and never looked back to explain why. 

Michelle Jones tried not to have regrets, she found them tedious, but sometimes, when all was quiet in her mind, she would regret what she did to Ben and May Parker. They had done nothing wrong. Neither of them had been a part of her marriage, as she shrunk smaller and smaller out of existence. They had embraced her and given her a home at sixteen when she desperately needed it. 

Michelle buried her face in her hands and took a deep breath. The air did not sting her nose like the smoggy streets of New York City. She could faintly smell the trees and the sunshine that permeated every nook and cranny of the dusty, old town.

She wandered and wandered until she ended up on the outskirts of Forest Hills. All of the kids used to climb up the lone hill to look at the stars. She could recall one night, when she was eight or nine, when a boy with a smile too wide for his face took her hand and dragged her all the way up to the peak of the hill to look at the stars. She had frowned. He had only grinned more broadly and quipped, "Come on, Wendy-bird. Let's fly!" 

It was the ghost of that girl, the echo of that night, that Michelle followed up the path to the top of the hill. The sun was hanging low in the sky and soon the stars would be out. Michelle had not looked at the stars in years. The light pollution in New York City was too great to get even a peak of the twinkling cosmos. She did not miss what she could not see. 

When she heaved to the top of the hill, she stared at the pale blue house that sat undisturbed there. She stared at it and stared at it, as if the act of staring would change its location. It did not budge. And neither did Michelle. 

"As I live and breathe, MJ Parker." 

Michelle looked up at the sky. The sun had set. The stars were out in all of their glory. "Hi Aunt May." 

"You look nice, sweetheart." 

She turned around and, like it had with Peter, time ceased to exist. She looked older, more weary, than she had when Michelle left, but she was still Aunt May. She was still stern yet loving and, like her nephew, she looked betrayed by her appearance. Michelle hung her head. "Thanks," she managed to peep. 

"You wanna cup of tea? I've still got that brand ya' like in the cupboard." 

She nodded, "Tea would be nice." 

* * *

The room looked the same as she remembered. It was a mishmash of styles and old furniture. There was a wine stain on the couch from a heated game of monopoly from seven years prior. There were pictures of the Parker clan everywhere. Michelle was loudly absent. It stung more than she figured she had a right to be hurt. 

"Where's Ben?" Michelle asked, as she gratefully accepted the tea Aunt May offered. 

The older woman's face fell. "Oh. Honey. He died two years ago." 

Michelle clenched her fist around the tea cup. It was too hot. It almost burned. She scarcely felt the pain. She swallowed the lump that threatened the smooth tremor of her voice, "I'm so sorry, May. How did...?" 

"Car accident. He was hit by a drunk driver 'bout twenty miles from here." Michelle lowered her cup. "Peter was devastated. He, uh, was meant to be in the car with him that night, running errands, but he had work at the last minute."

"I didn't know."

"Of course not. You weren't here." It was not an accusation. It was a fact. 

Two years ago she had been in New York City. She had just passed the Bar. Maybe the night Ben Parker died, she was out celebrating with her new city friends. Maybe not. All she knew with certainty was that she was not here. "May, if I had known..." 

May Parker silently pat Michelle on the hand, as if to quiet her half-hearted apologies. "We do what we can, sweetheart. Nothin' more and nothin' less." Michelle lifted the too hot cup of tea to her lips and took a sip. She pressed her lips together. May Parker did always make the worst cup of tea. May folded her hands together. "Why are you here, MJ?" 

She bit her lip. "I came to get Peter to sign our divorce papers." 

If May was surprised, she did not look it. She patiently nodded. "Okay. And what did he say?" 

"He won't sign them. Some bullsh— hooey about us already being married." 

"You are." 

Michelle rolled her eyes, "No, we aren't. I haven't seen him in five years. I left him." 

"MJ, honey, let's be frank, shall we? It'll save time." Michelle held onto the too-hot cup like a lifeline. Ben Parker had always been the gentler of the two Parkers, and now that he was gone, she feared what May might say. "You left my nephew. With no explanation. _Five years ago_. What did you think? You'd show up when was convenient to you, make a demand of the man you left and you'd get everything you wanted just like that?" May snapped her fingers. "'Cause if that's the case, you're not just arrogant. You're stupid." 

May plucked the tea from Michelle's hands and took her own sip. "And I never took you as someone that was stupid." 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tomorrow is a crazy busy day for me, so you get the update a DAY EARLY! happy holidays :)

The streets were quiet by the time Michelle left the Parker house at the top of the familiar green hill. Although, she mused, the streets of her hometown were always quiet. It was a sleepy town, so unlike New York City in every conceivable way. The streets were dim and the residents did not wander beyond the safety of their homes. In a town like home, Michelle did not have the noise and the bustle to drown out her thoughts like she found in New York.

She realized it had been years since she had slowed down long enough to hear herself think. She did not like what the voices in her head whispered. 

Michelle began to briskly walk. Soon, she jogged and then she ran. 

* * *

She was breathless by the time she crashed through the doors of the only open twenty-four hours joint in the entire town. The Industry had been a staple of her youth. Tony never carded any of the high schools kids that came through. There was the reckless confidence about small town living. No one minded much if the local kids got up to shenanigans. 

She hauled herself onto the rusty colored bench at the end of the bar and dropped her head in her hands. Michelle needed to plot an escape. If Peter was not going to sign the divorce papers, she would need to edit her plan. For years, she had been trying to handle their divorce in the easiest manner possible. She did not want to involve lawyers. None of her New York friends knew she had been married, especially her fiancé. Michelle wanted to handle the mistakes of her youth quietly and move-on. 

Yet, it seemed Peter was determined to make their divorce a messy affair. There would be no avoiding doing this the hard way. 

She needed to call Brad. 

She needed to tell him the truth about her past. 

There would be no shielding him from it now. 

Michelle groaned. 

She felt the icy sting of a glass brush against her forearms. Michelle blearily looked up into the shinning smile of Betty Bryant. The past hit her square in the chest. Her childhood best friend was pregnant. "Holy shit," Michelle uttered. 

Betty tapped the top of the beer glass. "That's for you. You look like you could use a pick me up." 

"Betty." 

"Heya, MJ." 

* * *

She laughed loudly and beer sloshed over the side of her fourth cup. Betty squealed in delight and wiped down the sticky counter. The two young women were gossiping over the bar, like no time had passed, and Michelle felt lighter than she had all day. The heavy stone that settled in her stomach when she boarded the airplane had floated off somewhere inconsequential. 

Betty exhaled dreamily, "Heaven and earth, New York City. I can't believe it." 

"Oh Bet," Michelle cooed. "Bet, you would love it there. It is so...so..."

"So what?" Betty asked, delightedly hanging onto every word. 

"Busy!" she finally settled with a giggle. "It never sleeps. Every hour of every day is wrung out like a towel. We use it all." 

Betty shook her head, still charmed and smiling, "Sounds too exciting for the likes of me." 

Michelle emphatically shook her head. "No. No, its not. Its just...this _place_ , Bet. It makes you think you don't deserve anything else. You do." She covered her friend's hand and squeezed her beer-tacky fingers. "You are more than this town." 

Betty pulled her hand away. Her mouth turned down in a frown. "I like this town. I like my life." 

"No," Michelle disagreed. "You only think you do." She remembered all too well when she had thought her life in her hometown was fine, too; but Michelle needed more than fine. She wanted spectacular. She deserved a fresh start after everything that had happened. 

If Michelle could be free, so could Betty.

Her heavily pregnant childhood friend eyed her half-empty glass. "I think you've had enough, MJ. You were always a light drinker." 

Michelle sputtered and waved off Betty's concern with a flippant hand, "I'm fine. You're not listening to me. Betty, you could leave." 

"I'm pregnant." 

"So what? Who cares?" 

Betty ground her teeth. "I care. I like it here. I'm sorry you didn't, but don't act like you know me, MJ. You've been gone five years." 

"Is everything alright here, Betty?" A third, terse voice entered the conversation. Michelle hung her head in exasperation. For the first time, she noticed how heavy her head actually had become over the last few hours, reminiscing with Betty over beers. It took some effort but she managed to lift her head to glare at the intruder. 

Her childhood best friend patiently replied, "I'm fine, Peter. It's fine." 

It was decidedly not fine. Peter Parker was why she had searched for her answers at the bottom of the four glasses of beer tonight. Him and his Aunt and his dead Uncle Ben. Her eyes flickered to Betty and she noticed the heavy hand her friend rested on her swelling stomach. 

Michelle pressed her palms against her eyes and took a deep, shuttering breath. 

"MJ?" Betty whispered, concerned. Michelle shook her head. Betty tried, again, "MJ, are you okay?" 

She was not okay. This whole town was going to suffocate her, if she stayed too long. It was just like Neverland. They had called their hometown that as kids, but, now, she knew it was true. No one grew up here. Time ceased to exist. If she stayed too long, she would start to forget and Michelle did not want to forget. 

Clumsily, she stumbled off the bench. Two strong hands held her up, catching her at the waist. The hands were warm and familiar, and for a moment she allowed herself to be supported. When she opened her clouded eyes, her blurry vision stitched together Peter's face. She frowned and shrugged him off of her. "Let me go," she pleaded. 

He did. She hated how much she missed the stability of his embrace. She was drunk, she reasoned. Drunk people had stupid, immature and reckless thoughts. 

Michelle started to trek out of the Industry, but finding the door was hard. Her shaky hands searched for the wall to guide herself to where she needed to go as her twisted feet worked against one another. Walking was a rather difficult pursuit. 

"C'mon, darling," Peter said, wrapping his arm around her middle. "Let me take you home." 

* * *

Home, as it turned out, was their home. He carried her up the creaky front steps and the wisps of fond memories, the ones that had danced around her mind when she had walked down the path earlier that day, revealed another night when he had carried her up the steps. Her dress had been second hand and off-white. She had protested when he swept her up in his arms, because she could walk all by herself, but he had argued it wasn't about her doing everything by herself. It was about doing things together. 

He set her on her feet once they walked through the front door and Michelle woozily stepped to the right. Her caught her by the elbow. She blinked at him. "You look sad," she astutely observed. 

"You still can't hold your booze," he retorted. 

"You let me go," she observed, again. 

"At the bar? You asked me to." 

She shook her head. "No. That night." He was still holding her elbow, keeping her upright. He scarcely breathed. Impatiently, she shrugged him off her elbow and he released her without argument. She propped her backside up against the back of the old blue chair she had once bought at a shop down the road so she did not fall over. "You let me go." 

"Em—"

"I _hate_ that nickname more than MJ. Don't call me that." He sighed. She hated how exasperated he sounded with her. She was not some silly little girl that was acting out. She was a grown woman who was allowed to drink if she liked. Her ex-husband, or soon-to-be ex-husband, had no say in the matter. "What were you even doing there, Peter?"

He quickly and unexpectedly crowded her space and she felt the stone that had floated away somewhere pleasant drop back into her stomach, heavier than before. It was lead and it was weighing her down to the floor. She was firmly planted. Michelle could not move out of his orbit if she tried. He was standing there, looking at her, tilting her chin up and checking her pupils, like he cared, and she was helpless to do anything but let him. When he was done fussing over her, he explained, "May called."

Michelle scowled, "I can take care of myself."

"Yeah, MJ. You showed me." His tone was biting sarcasm.

She felt the sting of shame and fury strangle her conscious. "I am not the same wounded girl you knew five years ago!"

"You're damn right, you're not the same girl I knew five years ago! Jesus, MJ. Who the hell are you, these days?" Her face flooded with heat. "My MJ would have never have been so unfeeling to Betty. Some people like it here. **Some people wanted to stay**." 

"Why did you let me go?!" She demanded, once more. She did not mean at the bar. The two of them knew it. 

With one question, she knocked all of the wind out of his sails. He ran an anxious hand through his dark curls. She remembered how she used to sit on his lap on their front porch, surrounded by the woods, and how she would card her fingers through his hair, making it stick up in every direction. He used to say she made him look crazy. She would kiss him and retort that if she liked the way he looked, why did it matter what everybody else thought? And he would smile. 

He was not smiling now. 

"Why did you let me go?" she asked again, more gently. 

He rang his hands, like he needed something to do with them, and said, "I went after you as soon as you'd gone."

She shook her head, "No, no you didn't." 

"Yes," he insisted. "I did. Maybe not right away, but by the end of that first week I was on the first flight out to you." He flexed and fisted his hands. "New York City is a big place. I dunno, MJ. I got there and I'd never seen nothing like it. I realized— I realized you deserved more than an apology after what had happened. I needed to make something of myself first before I got on my knees and begged you to forgive me. But, I don't know, months turned into a year and a year turned into two years...and then, you sent those papers that first time."

She grasped the back of the chair with deadly claws.

He shook his head, as if he had practiced some version of this talk a hundred times over the last five years and now that it had finally arrived he had managed to muck it up. She was too stunned to know if that was a true assessment or not. "You were in New York?" 

Peter nodded. 

Some ghostly memory reached out for him. _No,_ she dazedly realized, it was _her_. His eyes darkened, his pupils blowing wide. The room electrified, and Michelle knew she was about to do something stupid. She could not find the worry the care. Tentatively, Michelle braced her hands on his cheeks and the air sharpened further.

Until, the moment burst. The cold of her engagement ring brushed his face and Peter visibly recoiled. 

This time, he was the observant party. "You're drunk." He woefully lowered her hands from his face, hesitated, but finally seemed to decide. Peter quietly padded out of the room, flicking the lights off, leaving her in the darkness. 

Michelle staggered back into the chair she had used as support and floated down into the ugly blue seat. She covered her tingling, unkissed lips and closed her eyes. 

Another wisp, another memory, danced unbidden across the black canvas of her mind. 

She was nine. Peter was ten. They were playing Neverland in the heart of the woods, where they would one day build their house. 

"Peter!" she had cried. "You're too fast! Slow down! You'll forget all about me."

"Oh Wendy-bird," he had smiled at her with the unbridled exuberance of youth. "I could never forget about you." 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi all. thank you for your patience. I got carried away with the holidays and missed the Friday post. but here it is now. we are getting toward the end now. 
> 
> HAPPY 2020!

Peter Pan learned how to fly from Tinker Bell. The little faerie who was scarcely big enough to hold one emotion at a time dashed the magical boy with pixie dust and took him to the skies. In the stories, he was a natural fit for flying. Boys with the stars in their eyes are always made to dance among them. 

Wendy Darling was not a natural flyer. She was clumsy and trailed sloppily after Peter for the short time she orbited his world. It was not the pixie dust that did not suit her; no, it was the skies. 

Peter Parker, too, like the fae boy from the fairytales, was born to fly. When he not _nearly_ old enough to man the cockpit of the half-rusted single flyer planes out on old Tony Stark's abandoned field, he took them out for joy rides. The old man would shrug and toss him the keys whenever he asked. Peter would whoop and cheer, and, on the ground, with her worried fist pressed against her mouth, Michelle would wait for him to land. 

In those days, he smelled like fuel and machined metal. And when he stumbled out of the hold, he would stalk the path to MJ and sweep her up into a frenzied kiss. Under her fingertips, then, she could almost feel the vibrations of his thrumming blood. 

* * *

When she awoke the next morning on their lumpy, old couch, her head throbbed. Her mouth tasted like iron and stale beer from the night before. She sighed and fought against gravity to sit up. 

Her ex-husband threw open the front door, wiping his hands on a grease-stained rag, and let the morning light in. She flinched and turned her eyes away from the sun. Michelle groaned, "Jesus, Peter. Close the door." 

He did as she bid and slammed the door shut. She jumped out of her skin and the loud noise only set her teeth on edge further. Michelle sent him a withering stare, expecting him to be smirking back at her, but his face was worryingly impassive. There was nothing of the man who had looked at her the night before like she had been everything to him once. They were as good as strangers. 

Suddenly, the hangover was not the most painful ache. 

"I signed your divorce papers." He jerkily gestured to the manila envelope on their, or she supposed _his_ , coffee table. 

"You signed the divorce papers," she echoed blankly. 

"Yep," he glared down at the messy rag hanging limply in his hands. He crumpled it his hands and tossed it on the coffee table, just next to her divorce papers. Her freshly signed divorce papers. "Michelle," he rasped, and she startlingly realized it was the first time since she had come back that he called her by her full name. He had stubbornly stuck to her old, childhood nickname. It ached, too. "You've overstayed you're welcome here. You ought to be on your way."

She found herself nodding, dumbly, for lack of anything else to do. She was too wonderstruck by the turn of events. In the course of one night, he had gone from nearly kissing her to throwing her out of their old house. She had built and furnished the very room they were in with him not six years ago, in the woods of their childhood dreams. 

Her voice was rough from the alcohol when she said, "Thank you, Peter." 

He sniffed, "I'm sorry, you know. For everything. I didn't know, then. I understand better now."

* * *

A memory, a wisp:

The room was yellow. She liked yellow. 

Peter wrapped his arms around MJ and she settled back into her husband's arms, turning her face to nuzzle his cheek. He whooped a low laugh. "So," she said, looking back at the freshly painted room, "What do you think?"

He blew out a breath. "It's yellow." 

She rolled her eyes and snuggled closer to her husband. "It _is_ yellow." 

"And we like yellow," he asked.

"We do," she reminded him. 

He pressed a kiss into her loose curls. "Then, I love it." 

* * *

She felt her eyes sting with tears. She hastily wiped at her face, willing whatever dared to spill from her eyes to stop. "Its fine." 

He glanced back at the front door, then at his feet, before he said, "Still." 

* * *

Another memory, a wisp:

The room was white. Stale. Clinical.

The noise had been sucked out of the room. It was a vacuum of sound. In the sea of her unshed tears, she could vaguely see her husband shaking the doctor's hand, thanking him. She bitterly thought there was no reason to thank him.

* * *

"Michelle--" 

"Peter, don't," she shook her head. 

"You were always so strong," he plowed on, ignoring her plea. "I didn't think it was hurting you. I just thought...I don't know...maybe it was a blessing. We were so young." 

* * *

A final memory, a wisp:

The room was once yellow. Now, it was blue. She had hastily painted it in the night. She couldn't bare to look at the little mural she had painted with May on the back wall. It was all a stark reminder of what the yellow room had been and what it would never be.

MJ sat crumpled on the floor, the blue paint brush resting on her knee. Her eyes were unseeing. She was crying. Silently.

Peter padded into the room, covered in grease. He had been at the air field, again. She could smell it on him. She did not even have to look to know where her husband had snuck off to in the afternoon. 

"MJ," he whispered, dropping to his knees beside his wife. 

She did not look at him. 

"MJ," he said, again, more urgently. He cupped her tear-stained cheeks in his hands and brushed his thumbs on the angles of her cheekbones. "Sweetheart, when are you going to let this go?" 

The chipped pieces of her heart finally shattered completely. She hiccupped a sob. 

And that night, without a word, she left for New York. She made sure to close the empty door of the blue room behind her as she went. 

* * *

"It took a long time for me to realize you weren't okay. To understand why you couldn't stand to be in this town anymore. Even when I went to New York, to find you, I didn't really understand yet. I wanted you so desperately that I didn't even think, fuck, maybe, what does she want?" He exhaled a hoarse, wobbly sound. She saw the courage it took to finally look at her. It knocked her breathless. His own eyes were glistening. "And so, you don't want to be married to me, anymore? Fine. I ain't gonna fight you about it anymore." 

She picked up the envelope and pulled the divorce papers free. Her eyes scanned the paperwork and with each flick of each page his name was scrawled where appropriate. He had really signed them. Michelle looked up at him, in disbelief, as if some part of her heart had wrongly assumed he would never acquiesce. "Thank you," she muttered, earnestly. 

"Please go," he hitched. "And don't never come back." 

* * *

The airport three towns over was a monstrosity. At her boarding gate, Michelle stared out of the expansive, glass windows that peaked out to the airfield where all of the planes landed and lived. The waiting attendant, at the desk, to her left, smiled politely and said, "Do you fly here often, miss?"

Michelle shook her head, "Not, uh, for a long time, no." 

"These parts have some of the best planes in the country, you know." 

She graciously indulged the young attendant and droned, "Is that so?"

The girl nodded, vigorously, "Yep! We win all kinds of awards for smaller, two-seater and jet-sized planes. The best custom plane maker in these whole United States is from a few towns from here." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yep," she said, and pressed her finger to the glass, pointing at a series of planes in the distance. "They're called Spiders. Those red and black ones over there." 

"They're nice," Michelle non-committedly said. 

"I like Parker planes a whole lot. S'why I got into working on planes in the first place." 

Her blood ran cold. For the first time in the entire conversation, Michelle was keenly interested in what the young woman had to say. She squinted in the distance to look more closely at the planes. And just there, if she inspected the planes more closely, she could spot the painted names on each of the aircrafts.

In blue, the same blue she had painted that old room, was scrawled the names: _Neverland, The M, Wendy-Bird_ and, finally, _Mayday_. 

Her hand stretched across her flat stomach. 

"Parker. As in Peter Parker." 

The girl nodded, enthusiastically, "Yeah, you know him?" 

Her phone rang. It was a shrill sound. In a daze, Michelle pulled it from her bag and glanced at the caller ID.

**Brad Davis.**


	5. Chapter 5

“Jesus, Michelle,” husked the familiar, baritone voice into the receiver of the phone. 

“Brad. Honey. Hi.”

She heard him sigh. “Where have you been? Our wedding planner mentioned you blew off an appointment with the caterer yesterday. That isn’t like you, Chelley.” Something traitorous and desperate internally rattled at the nickname. 

She glanced beyond the wall-height windows back out to the field where all of Peter’s Spider Planes sat quiet and patient, penitent after years of making a wrong right. Michelle could not ignore the glaring blue of each of their names. Mayday yanked on her broken heart. 

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to say. Her hands tightened on the manila envelope clutched in her hand. “I had some business I had to sort out back home rather unexpectedly.” 

“Shit. Honey, are you alright?”

She nodded, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m coming back to the city on the next flight out. It’s all sorted.”

He pleasantly tutted. "Good. When do you get in?" She could hear the faint traces of distraction beginning to paint his tone. He had other things to do. Brad was a busy man. The two had met in the flurry of New York City. It was the lights, brilliant and ever-glowing in the sleepless landscape, that made him look so dazzling, she recalled. Smoke and mirrors, like all good magic tricks. 

Brad was an illusion. She liked the mystic. 

Peter was magic. Neverland. Boys that never grew up. 

She spotted the plane in the distance, again. Little Mayday was a piece of art. She could see how she was lovingly built, even from afar. 

"Michelle?" Brad prompted. 

“JFK. Seven o’clock.” Michelle tore her eyes from the airfield. She was going to fly home. To New York City and Brad. Wonderful, ever distracted Brad. He never seemed interested in her life before New York, which suited Michelle just fine. The most wonderful thing about Brad was that he never pressed. Unlike Peter, he was a passive participant in her life. He left her to her own devices, even when it was lonely. 

“I’ll be there,” Brad said. “Love you.”

“I lo—“ She heard the click of the phone as he hung up. The words she had meant to say, chalky autopilot, fell flat on her tongue. She stood with her phone pressed to her ear for a long time before the flight team called for boarding. 

Michelle slowly lowered her hand with her phone fisted in her arresting grip. It was on time. There were no delays. Not even time was conspiring to keep her in Alabama. She was free to leave. She had her divorce papers. Officially, her business her was concluded and nothing was keeping her from boarding the plane.

She looked back at the airfield and saw the hulking mass of the pretty plane in the distance.

Mayday.

* * *

_"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Peter Parker requesting emergency landing. Do you copy?"_

_The nine year old Michelle Jones, standing in for an airfield operator at the base of a lumbering tree, solemnly nodded. "Copy that, Peter Parker. You are free to land!"_

_"Peter Parker landing." He leapt from the tallest branch of the tree he was hanging off of like some kind of magical, mischievous boy. MJ squealed with laughter, and when his feet his the ground he gave chase. Her laughter echoed in the forest of their childhood._

_"Mayday! Mayday!" She shouted._

_"Nuh uh," he crowed, as he yanked his arms around her middle, pulling his best friend snuggly into the curve of his arms. "I'm the pilot."_

_She had leaned against him, huffing childishly. "How come you're always the pilot?"_

_"Cause I know how to fly." He said with all the seriousness of someone too young to be so labored._

_MJ had unwound herself from his grip and asked wondrously, "Teach me?"_

_He held his hand out. "Always."_ _She took it without question._

* * *

_"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Peter Parker requesting emergency landing. Do you copy?"_

Peter remembered, as he sat at the base of the tree he had spent nearly afternoon of his childhood. He had spent those afternoons with MJ, and when they stepped into adulthood, together, he married her at the foot of the same tree. May had strung up some pretty lights. He had thought it looked like a fairytale, or maybe MJ had. He didn't remember the particulars of who said what on that day. His heart only remembered how she had looked as she glided toward him in her borrowed dress.

He cursed and yanked himself off of the ground, stomping back into their, _no_ , _his_ house.

Peter felt like some caged animal as he paced in his little house, tracking mud and dirt and earth on the six year old carpet. He was restless. There was nothing to help the feeling that weighed down his already heavy heart, and somehow he found the room to worry that his incessant pacing would erode at the wooden slats of his living room and he might fall through the floor.

But his mind would not switch off. It was running and running like some broken engine of the planes he worked on day and night. Only, Peter knew how to fix those broken things. He did not even know how to begin to pick up what was left of him now that MJ was really gone.

He cursed loudly. It was neurotic to care so deeply about MJ after everything that had happened the last twenty-four or so hours. 

She had shown up with divorce papers in hand and demanded he throw away all of the love he had been keeping safe for her all of these years. That hurricane of a woman practically ordered him to play by her rules. It was infuriating how much he could still love her after all of the hurt that existed between them. 

Peter walked back toward his front door. He could make it to the airport before her flight left, if he went now— his hand hovered above the door handle— but then, maybe not. MJ made it perfectly clear that she did not want him anymore. _Christ_ , she was getting remarried to some New York hotshot who likely had some fabulous career in butt kissing. 

He muffled his scream into his fists. 

Peter missed the click of the front door as it opened. But he did not miss the woman that stood in the entryway. She raised one beautiful, unimpressed eyebrow and observed, “You still do that?” 

He dumbly remarked, “MJ. You’re here.”

She tossed the manila envelope at his feet, the way she had when she first arrived, and crossed her arms impatiently over her chest. “Well. Go on. Read it.”

It was some weird echo of the other night. He knew how the story ended, he knew what was in the manila envelope, and yet he still cautiously bent down to retrieve the paperwork. “Did I forget to sign something?”

She stood as immovable as stone. “There’s a signature missing.”

Peter flipped open the envelope and retrieved the paperwork. He dutifully marked page after page, looking for where he neglected to sign. Every designated mark had his signature. Peter slowly tried to make sense of the document, turning back and forth through multiple pages. “I must be missing it. Can you show me?”

When he looked at her, finally after scrutinizing the document meant to cleave his life in two, he noticed she looked apprehensive. Her bottom lip was worried beneath her teeth. “Did I fuck up the paperwork? Did I mis-sign something?” Peter took another look at the divorce papers. 

“I didn’t say _your_ signature was missing.”

His heart thudded to an abrupt halt. His vision cleared on the dotted line above **Michelle Parker** and he realized there was a signature missing. _Hers_.

Peter arrested her with his gaze and asked, “Do I need to be in the room with you when you sign or something?” 

She shook her head. 

“So you could have done this on your plane.” 

She nodded. 

“But you didn’t.”

She shook her head no.

He locked his jaw so it didn’t tremble. “Why not?”

“I saw the planes, Peter. I saw Mayday.” Something emotional caught on MJ’s voice. “She’s beautiful.”

He nodded, stupefied, “She is.”

“I don’t know if things can be like they once were. I meant what I said. I can’t stay here. My life is in New York now. But—“

“But?” Peter took a stupid, foolish and hopeful step forward. Even after everything. Of course after everything.

“But,” she reiterated with a misty smile. “As you can see, I’m in a bit of a bind. Those papers say I ain’t divorced.”

Something inflated in his chest, fit to burst. His glass heart was a fragile structure, burdened by heartbreak, but the more lethal attack on what was left of his tattered heart was the sudden arresting, sliver of hope. _Fuck_. Peter thought he knew something about hoping and wishing and dreaming. He had done it the better part of five years. But he did not know the true gravity of it until this moment. Less than five hours ago, when he had signed those damnable divorce papers, she was all but lost to him, and now she was standing there with her bottom lip worried beneath her teeth, eyes beseeching him for something he was too afraid to have after all these years alone. 

He had missed her. He had hated her. He had loved her. Time had healed some of the wounds, but he was still raw. He was afraid to give her the deed to his heart, again. After all, he had signed it away. _She had asked him to do it._

Peter swallowed thickly, "Why would you wanna be married to me, anyhow?" 

She looked completely out of place in the home that was once theirs. MJ had outgrown everything about this town. He had thought it meant she had outgrown him, too, and her showing up here was just one final goodbye. Maybe he was mistaken, but he wasn't sure his heart could endure another farewell. 

"So I can kiss you whenever I want." But she didn't. Peter reeled from the unanswered expectation of her kiss. Instead, she waited, practically trembling with apprehension. He realized, with the thump, thump, thump of his heart, she was waiting for him to decide. He realized, if he wanted another chase, looting in and out of woods after the girl that always ran away, he would have to catch her. 

When they were kids, she had run and he had always caught her. Somehow, somewhere in the blight of adulthood, he had forgotten to catch her. It was why she had left in the first place. There had been no arms to hold her.

"Hey," he crowded her space, wordlessly tilting his chin up in an unspoken command.

She husked a relieved laugh. It was different than the glittering giggle of their youth, but she was different, too. So was he. Peter found he didn't mind. He loved every MJ. He would love this one, too. He already did. 

And when she kissed him, soft and sweet, in the house in the middle of the forest where they had first fallen in love, he thought she tasted like flying.


End file.
